KONSHUU | Volume 51, Issue 12
EUREKA SEVEN: PSALM OF OUR PLANET ERIK NELSON
Writer
2nd Year, Mathematics and Music
For he is one with Earth-Chan
stroy the scub coral because he sees them as enemy invaders; in a way he’s right. However, the main character, Renton Thurston, falls in love with a humanoid coralian called Eureka. The scub coral seeks to understand humanity and become friends, so it sends out Eureka as a messenger to understand how humans work. Plot happens, but the point is that Renton doesn’t want the scub coral to be destroyed or else Eureka would be gone.
SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! Eureka Seven is one of my favorite anime. It’s sadly underrated too. It has so much going on in it, it’s like a flaming garbage heap of ideas. It’s like a mix between Evangelion mindfuck and environmentalist propaganda. Instead of the third impact, there’s a global environmental catastrophe. Instead of alien angels, there’s alien coral, which is weird but it’s something a hippie environmentalist would think up. The show mixes messages about the environment with spirituality and the supernatural, and weaves these in with all the other main themes in the show. On one hand Eureka Seven is an inspiring coming of age story ala Gurren Lagann; like many shows of this nature, there is a major antagonist who has philosophical significance: the conflict is what causes the main character’s development. In the case of Eureka Seven, the main conflict is between humans and mysterious aliens called the scub coral. The main antagonist of the show, Dewey Novak, wants to de-
Interestingly, despite being technically aliens, the scub coral seem to represent the earth (spoilers, the show takes place on earth) and nature but also the “supernatural” and mystical powers of nature. What seem to be just an element of their world, energy waves called trapars that they skateboard on, are actually scub coral emissions. Scub coral eruptions cause earthquakes, and people becoming part of the scub coral causes “desperation disease.” Skyfish, which fly on trapars are coralians. Natural (in the sense that nature has supernatural powers) elements of the world of Eureka Seven are associated with the scub coral. The oppressed religious group, the Vodaracs, who possess seemingly supernatural powers, and are based off of buddhist ideas, are merely one with the scub coral. Kind of like being one with nature. This is the framework of the environmentalist ideas in this show, basically by giving nature a representation as an intelligent lifeform and making the central conflict of the show surround it. In particular, one episode stands out to me, episode 25: World’s End Dancehall Garden. This episode focuses on Renton’s encounter with William B. Baxter. Will represents the first true antithesis to Dewey’s way of thinking that we encounter in the show. Whereas Holland and the Gekkostate are fighting Dewey for political reasons, Will represents a pure philosophical departure from Holland and Dewey’s entire way of thinking, like Holland and Dewey are on opposing ends of a spectrum, but Will is on a different spectrum entirely. Will is happy and carefree in an apocalyptic world. He is attuned with trapars, and can apparently communicate with this comatose wife who has desperation disease. However, he says it’s not desperation disease because
